Essays on trans, intersex, cis and other persons and topics from a trans perspective.......All human life is here.

This site is the most comprehensive on the web devoted to trans history and biography. Well over 1400 persons worthy of note, both famous and obscure, are discussed in detail, and many more are mentioned in passing.)

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30 September 2016

1. Doctors attempting to establish whether a cis man or trans woman could get
pregnant with an ectopic pregnancy. The theory for how to do this was in place
by 1985, but if any such pregnancy has been brought to term, it is not known to
the public

2. Frauds and performance by cis men.

3. Trans men have quietly, and then less quietly, been getting pregnant all
along, often with no aid at all from doctors.

1807

John Fubbister from the Orkney Isles was part of a Hudson’s Bay
expedition that canoed 1800 miles up river arriving at Pembina Post on the Red
River (in the future North Dakota) for Christmas. There Fubbister gave birth and
was outed. AKA Isobel Gunn: EN.Wikipedia

1936

Nochmen Tenenbaum (born 1911) army sergeant, Warsaw, gave birth in
1936. GVWW

Early 1960s

David Kirby of Oxford University transplanted mouse embryos into the
testes of male mice. See Teresi & McAuliffe, 1985.

Mid-1960s

Cecil Jacobsen of George Washington University Medical School
transplanted a fertilized baboon egg into the abdomen of a male baboon. The
embryo attached itself to the omentum (which hangs in
front of the intestines). The embryo developed healthily, but was aborted after
four months. This was done without external hormones. The embryo produced the
hormones that it needed. However the results were never published. See Teresi
& McAuliffe, 1985. See also EN.Wikipedia and book
and film about Jacobsen.
Jacobsen was a pioneer in amniocentesis, but later
in life was convicted of using his own sperm in in vitro conceptions.

1970

Leo
Wollman flew up to Toronto for the release of Dianna
Boileau's autobiography. He rather dominated the event and predicted that
transsexual women would be able to become pregnant within 10 years. This never
came to pass.

1971

Novel: John Varley. The Ophiuchi Hotline. Dial, 1971. A
science fiction novel set the future when alien technology enables persons to
change sex and be fertile. Men become women to have a child, and then switch
back. EN.Wikipedia

1979

Margaret Martin, a NZ cis woman, then 29 gave birth to a healthy girl
in May, eight months after her hysterectomy, thereby establishing that ectopic
[outside the womb] pregnancies were safe and feasible. Her gynaecologist,
Peter Jackson told journalists that this proved that pregnant men were
therefore possible. See Teresi & McAuliffe, 1985.

1984

1985

Dick Teresi & Kathleen McAuliffe. “Male pregnancy”.Omni, December 1985, 8: 50-56 and 118. PDF
Influential and inspiring article that summarized the work done to date.
Afterwards Teresi got Bob
Guccione, founder of Omni and Penthouse to put up $500,000 for Jacobsen to
arrange a male pregnancy, but they then considered the mortality rates and
dropped the idea.

Early 1990s

Trans man, Oleg (born 196?) Moscow: Four months into term his
sperm-donor died suddenly of a leukaemia-related blood disorder. Oleg’s doctor
feared that the baby would also be sick, and convinced him to have an abortion.
Before they could try again, his wife died of a congenital heart defect. Oleg
was considering getting pregnant again, as a way of honouring his wife’s memory.
Discussed in David Tuller. Cracks in the Iron Closet: Travels in Gay &
Lesbian Russia. Faber & Faber 1996: 161-4.

1992

Edwin Bayron, 32, Phillipines, a midwife, claimed to be hermaphroditic
and six-months pregnant. He was able to fake the results of an ultrasound scan
and two urine tests, such that the chief gynaecologist at the Bukidnon
provincial hospital supported the claim. However this was a deceit resulting
from his wish to marry his boyfriend. News
article.

Intersex Karl Holzer, living as male, 31, Frankfurt, Germany, gave
birth to boy in June. Weekly
World News.

1994

Film: Junior, Ivan Reitman (dir), with Arnold Schwarzenegger
and Danny Devito. US 109 mins 1994. As part of fertility research, a male
scientist agrees to become pregnant. IMDBEN.Wikipedia Based
on the theory in the 1985 Omni article.

1998

Sam Dylan More. "The Pregnant Man - An Oxymoron". Journal of Gender
Studies. 7, 3, 1998: 319-328. This article studies nine German trans men who
have been pregnant, and found that they had to engage in significant identity
and body work to mitigate the impact of societal pregnancy scripts.

1999

Matt Rice (born 1964) San Francisco, twice a lover of Pat(rick)
Califia. Pat had undergone a hysterectomy some years before, but Matt had
stopped taking testosterone because of related migraines. With the aid of sperm
donated sexually by three male friends, Matt became pregnant, and as a bearded
man attended birthing classes. Meanwhile Califia started transition. The son,
Blake (born 1999), is autistic, and Matt is raising him alone. 2000 article by
Califia in Village Voice

Lee Mingwei Taiwanese man in New York who exhibited his pregnancy.
”Curiously, the Web site has been up since 1999, and Mr. Lee is apparently still
pregnant! Either the poor man has been in labor for nearly a decade (talk about
a rough delivery!), or the story is a fake. Of course, Mr. Lee doesn't exist;
the Web site is a hoax created as performance art by an artist named Virgil
Wong.”

2005

2006

Film: Jules Rosskam (dir). Transparent. US 61 Mins
2006. A documentary about 19 trans men who have been pregnant and are now
raising the child. IMDB

2008-10

Thomas Beatie, (born 1974, completed top-surgery transition 2002,
married 2003) Arizona, with an infertile wife, became pregnant via donated sperm
and a syringe. He wrote an article for The Advocate about the experience, and
was profiled in The Washington Post. He became a media sensation, and did an
hour-long interview on Oprah. He gave birth to a daughter June 2008, a son June
2009 and a second son July 2010. Mr & Mrs Beatie were divorced in 2012-4 in
a case that tested legal definitions of gender. EN.Wikipedia Not the
first pregnant man, but the first publicised.

2010

2011

Yuval Topper (born 1988), Israel, top-surgery 2009, gave birth to a
son in December 2011. Gay
Star News. And a daughter in 2014. Jews
News

Trevor MacDonald (born 1985) Manitoba, top surgery in early 20s, gave
birth to a boy in 2011, and a second child in 2014. He was helped by La Leche
League Canada, the breastfeeding support group. He applied to be a LLLC coach
but was rejected as he does not regard himself as a mother. However LLLC set up
an internal review and a year later expunged gendered language from its
requirements. He founded in 2012 "Birthing and Breast or
Chestfeeding Trans People and Allies which has 1700 members, and in 2014
formed a research team with funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health
Research . The
StarEN.Wikipedia

2012

AJ Kearns (born 1974) Melbourne, started transitioned at age 35. His
wife had birth complications with their first child, so AJ postponed transition
to give birth to their second child in 2012. The couple have since separated. Daily
Mail

2013

Kayden Coleman (born 1985) Philadelphia, and his husband gave birth to
a daughter in 2013. NY
Daily News

There is also a book The Pregnant Man by Roberto Zapperi, Harwood,
1991, translated and revised into English by Brian Williams (original Uomo incinto,
Cosenza, 1979). This book is not listed in Amazon. It is not about attempts or
success of pregnancy in life, but in folklore and in psychoanalysis. It appears
that he is totally ignorant of queer studies, but cites Freud, Ferenczi and
Devereux instead as the latest research.

-------------------

So is a pregnant trans parent a mother or a father? Trans women with children
are divided: some insist that they are mothers to their children, while others
talk of their duties as a father, and allow their children to call them ‘Dad’.
However trans women parents are, almost all, parents before transition. The
trans men whom we list above had done most of transition before they became
pregnant.

There are three factors:

1. Fathers impregnate, mothers gestate.

2. Mothers produce a single or a small number of DNA units surrounded by
protein (eggs); fathers produce a large number of motile DNA units without
protein and which cannot divide, but have a tail (sperm). Fish species of the Syngnathidae family, of
which the best known is the seahorse, are said to exhibit male pregnancy. So why
do we not regard the gestating parent as a mother? It is because it produces
sperm, and receives eggs from the other sex.

3. Gender identity.

Obviously (1) and (2) would make a pregnant trans man a mother, however the
current social construction is that (3) trumps (1) and (2). A valuable tenet of
second-wave feminism was that gender is a social construction, and that received
gender roles should be deconstructed. The more advanced position is that sex, as
well as gender, is socially constructed. Male pregnancy is a step further and
challenges the historical cultural baggage that we inherited along with the
basic biology of making babies. The queering of everyday life continues.

27 September 2016

Facial Feminization Surgery is sometimes said to have been developed by surgeon Douglas Ousterhout in 1982. Of course transsexuals had surgery to change their appearance before that date, although perhaps not in so systematic an approach. It was then referred to by the more general term "plastic surgery" but also as "facial contouring". Rhinoplasty (nose jobs) were the most common such operation. The same plastic surgeons often also did breast enhancements. Here are two New York surgeons who worked in this field.

Felix Shiffman (1925 - 2005)

Felix Shiffman was born in New York City, served in the US Army, earned a
dental degree at New York University and a medical degree from Hadassah University in Tel Aviv. He practiced cosmetic surgery for over forty years from
1954 in New York City, and also owned an art gallery. He advertised his services
to transsexual patients, particularly in New York Magazine, and was known
for his rhinoplasties.

In 1974 Luis Suria, then aged 45, was in transition to female. She was an unlicensed school teacher, who had not worked steadily since 1961, but held sporadic employment as a commercial artist. She visited Drs Shiffman and Rish, mainly the former, in June/July 1974 and again in December 1974 and underwent injections of
free silicone to acquire female breasts. By March 1975 Suria’s breasts were sore
and she returned for treatment from Dr Shiffman, who referred her to Dr Dhaliwal who performed a
bilateral subcutaneous mastectomy. Suria, shocked by the severity
of the resulting wounds, checked out of the hospital against medical advice, and later
developed a wound site infection which required another operation.

Meanwhile, in 1980 Dr Shiffman was advertising: “Specializing in Cosmetic Surgery and
Facial Contouring for Transsexuals”. New York Magazine reported that his
receptionist was giving quotes for silicone shots at $120 to $240 a unit, but
when the magazine spoke to Shiffman, he denied doing silicone shots.

Luis Suria, having abandoned transition, became a born-again Christian, and, with psychiatric help,
returned to being “a regular man”. He sued for malpractice and the case Luis Suria v. Felix Shiffman et al came to court in 1983. The plaintiff
argued that Shiffman committed malpractice when he injected silicone into Suria's breasts in July and December 1974, that Dhaliwal committed malpractice in the
performance of the mastectomy, and that Dhaliwal had improperly failed to obtain
informed consent for the procedure. Suria maintained that consent was given for "incision and drainage” but not for a mastectomy. In contention Shiffman claimed that he did not treat the patient until December 1976,
and that “symptoms were caused by injections of mineral oil administered by a
transsexual friend”.

In November 1983, the jury found that in July and December 1974 Shiffman
did commit malpractice which was a proximate cause of the plaintiff's injuries, that
Dhaliwal did not commit malpractice but did fail to obtain plaintiff's informed
consent, which failure was a cause of the plaintiff's injuries, that the plaintiff was
guilty of negligence that was a cause of his injuries, that Shiffman was 60% at
fault, Dhaliwal 15% and the plaintiff 25%, and that the plaintiff's total damages were
$2,000,000. The trial court dismissed the claim against Shiffman on the ground
that plaintiff's contributory negligence barred recovery and, reducing the
amount of the verdict by 25%, the proportionate share of plaintiff's fault,
entered judgment in the principal amount of $1,500,000 against Dhaliwal alone.

Both Dhaliwal and Suria appealed, objecting to the direction of a verdict in favor
of Shiffman. Dhaliwal argued that he was a "successive tort-feasor" (a person who commits a second tort against the same previously injured party) and should not
be held responsible for the entire damage award. The verdict against Shiffman
was reinstated.

Suria talked of writing a book to help “those
who are confused about their sexual orientation” (sic). His final award was $600,000.

In later years Dr Shiffman specialized in liposculpture, and as late as 1999,
Shiffman was still doing breast augmentations.

In March 2000 Shiffman pleaded no contest to “practicing fraudulently; filing
a false report; practicing with negligence and incompetence on more than one
occasion and failing to maintain accurate records”, and surrended his medical
license.

In 2001 Shiffman retired to Ormand Beach, Florida. In September 2003 he was
involved in a car accident where a man pushing a motorcycle was killed. He died
at age 79 shortly afterwards.

Sharon Churcher. "The Anguish of the Transsexuals". New York
Magazine, 13, 25, June 16, 1980: 49.

“Suria v. Shiffman”. Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of the
State of New York, First Department, March 19, 1985. Leagle.
Find
a Case

Peter Fries (? – 1981)

Peter Freis was a plastic surgeon on Park Avenue, New York in the 1970s. He
advertised in New York Magazine, and did facial work and breast implants for mtf
transsexuals.

He is said to have practiced 'closed capsulotomy' to break the capsular
contracture, a reaction to breast and other implants. This was just brute force, squeezing the
breasts till the scar tissue split.

His last nurse was Robyn Arnold, the girlfriend who was charged with, but not
convicted of, the murder of Diane
Delia. Fries died, by happenstance, a few days after Delia was
killed.

While Wolfe mentioned “Freiss” in the magazine version of the Diane Delia
story, he is not mentioned under either spelling in the reprint in her book The Professor and the Prostitute, and Other True Tales of Murder and Madness, 1987.

“The founding clinician at Charing Cross, Richard Green, came with an
impressive academic pedigree, having worked with Money, collaborating on
research on boys who demonstrated cross-gender behaviour.”

Richard Green was reported to be in London in 1966 and 1969. He very likely
visited the existing Charing Cross clinic, but he certainly had no position
there. He is not even mentioned in John Randell’s book. Also the Feminine Boy
Project was still in the future: it was done in the 1970s.

“Up until the second half of the twentieth century, the word ‘gender’
referred to grammatical gender, a feature of language not human identity.”

Not this canard again! Obviously Matthews does not read 17-19th
century novels. Some examples:

Henry Fitzgeffrey 1620: “Now Mars defend us! seest thou who comes yonder?
Monstrous! a Woman of the Masculine Gender.”
Susanna Centlivre, early 18th century playwright reported that
theatre managers 'treated her ... in the Masculine Gender'.
George Byron, Don Juan, 1824, having got his protagonist into female
dress justifies using female pronouns: 'I say her because,/The gender
still was epicene'.

Matthews then writes about John Money, lobotomy, John Money again, Bruce Reimer of course. She does not
at all mention the Charing Cross doctors who worked with trans patients in the
1960s, ie. John
Randell, Lennox
Broster, Peter Philip. Come to that, there is also no mention of a certain
Harry
Benjamin. For Matthews, it seems, Money alone invented transsexualism!

Matthews writes: “For the Reimer case is open to
many different readings. Zoe Playdon attributes the failings of UK gender
identity clinics to this history”. This is a remarkable statement in that the
details of the Reimer case would not be known for another 20 or 30 years.
Certainly there is no mention of it in Randell’s 1973 book.

Matthews seems to think that Money was such an overwhelming influence that
Charing Cross followed his lead: “The science of gender emerged from a tiny
group centred on John Money and its findings were ethically compromised”. If
this were so why cannot it be demonstrated from Randell’s writings?

Here is the bibliography from Randell’s book.

The only mention of Green or
Money is the 1969 anthology, which would be included as Randell contributed a
paper to it. However none of Money’s or Green’s writings are listed, nor are
they in the index, nor are they mentioned in the text.

In the 1960s the UK was less dependent on US fashions. To take two
contemporary examples, that is 1965-7, compare the anti-psychiatry of RD Laing
to the Scientology fellow-traveller Thomas
Szasz, or the radical difference between the psychedelic music of Pink Floyd
and Soft Machine from that which came from San Francisco. John Randell, whatever
else we may think of his attitude, was his own man, and no-one has argued that
he was a disciple of Money.

Having ignored the history of the CXGIC, Matthews jumps quickly to the
21st century, and as proof of Money’s influence she writes: “Echoes
of the founding beliefs are still apparent in a 2011 paper by James Barrett,
currently lead clinician at Charing Cross GIC. ‘Disorders of gender identity
have probably always existed, inside and outside Europe’, Barrett writes, citing
a 1975 study (Heiman).”

Heiman is not in her bibliography. Comments about trans
people being everywhere are found in every popular survey. May I suggest Oscar
Gilbert’s Men in Women's Guise: Some Historical Instances of Female
Impersonation, 1926 or many News of the World articles over the
decades. To claim this as part of Money’s influence is to show that Matthews
does not begin to understand what he had to say.

She spends most of the paper attacking Barrett and the fact that he has said
different things at different times. He is wrong when he and other clinicians
decide what to do ignoring the patients’ wishes, and he is wrong when he listens
to the trans persons who come to the clinic and he accepts their self-diagnosis.
“This claim is important, for if trans were a disorder (as in 1966),
the work of the clinic would belong in a worrying tradition, one that harks back
at the worst to lobotomy and calls up disturbing memories of the treatment of
David Reimer. If trans has any links to body dysmorphia, to anorexia,
or to self-harm, then it could not be appropriate to medicate or to offer
surgery, however acceptable to the patient, however fiercely demanded.”

Having attacked Money for not listening to David Reimer’s self-diagnosis that
he was not a woman, Matthews is still not willing to accept the equivalent
self-diagnosis of trans persons. She connects trans and trauma: “Perhaps the
most important voices are those of transitioners and detransitioners who are now
beginning to explore what they see as a relationship between trans and trauma,
challenging the constricting logic which demands that the complexity of human
experience must fit the constructs of the gender narrative.”

Let us suppose that there is merit in Matthew’s linking of trans and trauma.
She undermines her own case by distorting the history of the CXGIC and
especially her (how shall we put if) Money-fication of its history and by paying
no attention at all to the clinic’s pioneers.

16 September 2016

1983 Stephanie
Anne Lloyd, marketing manager, was referred by a Manchester doctor to
Russell Reid at Charing Cross GIC. Afterwards she would create Transformation
retail shops for trans persons in Manchester and later London.

Ashley Robin, who had
stepped in as the head of the GIC appointed Donald Montgomery as clinical
physician in 1984, and retired in 1985.

1985 Christine
Goodwin, bus driver, became a patient. She would later win recognition as
legally female at the ECHR in 2002.

Two studies were carried out at the GIC by Charles Mate-Kole, Maurizio
Freschi & A. Robin.

a) “We presented the results of a retrospective study of 150 patients and a
second, randomised controlled study of 40 patients. We studied 150 male
transsexuals at different stages of treatment: assessment stage (n= 50); waiting
list stage (n= 50); and postoperative stage (n=50). The results indicated a
significant reduction in neurotic symptoms and improved social state in
transsexuals postoperatively compared with patients at the waiting list stage,
who fulfilled the criteria for surgery but were awaiting operation, and
assignment to an assessment group.”

b) We “compared two groups of male transsexuals who had been assessed and
carefully selected for surgery. They were randomly assigned to one of two
groups; the experimental group had their waiting time for surgery brought
forward so that they were operated on within three months of fulfilling the
criteria, and the control group had to wait for the routine two years before
undergoing surgery. All the patients were equally matched for age, social class,
number of years of clinic attendance, and several other variables that might
affect outcome. The results suggested that after two years of follow up there
were significant differences between the two groups on a number of psychiatric
and social, variables, showing a significant advantage for the experimental
group over the controls.”

11-12 December 1986. International Conference on Gender Identity was held in
London. This was really a British conference, but the Clarke Institute, Toronto
was represented, and thus the name. It was organised by Charles Mate-Kole,
research psychologist at the GIC. “Addresses covered a broad range of themes
from the literary style of transsexual autobiographies to the hepatotoxic effect
of methyltestosterone, and from the work of the speech therapist in the team to
the latest surgical development in phalloplasty which uses a radial artery flap
to create the urethra. The present legal disabilities of transsexuals were
discussed and an interesting paper on classification clarified the distinction
between transsexualism and homosexuality yet noted the curious variants in the
relationship of gender identity to sexual orientation.” The
Mate-Kole-Freschi-Robin studies were presented.

In 1987 J Bryan Tully completed his PhD thesis, Accounting for
transsexualism, based on 204 trans patients, most of whom were seen at
Charing Cross GIC, and concluded that “here is a fundamental weakness in the
imposition of psychiatric 'syndromes' on gender dysphoric phenomena. Rather,
'gender dysphoric careers' are proposed as fluctuating enterprises in the
construction of meanings, some meanings being more fateful and workable than
others”.

Grant
Williams, consultant urologist at Charing Cross Hospital, wrote to the
British Medical Journal in November 1987. “One gender reassignment
operation takes the whole of one afternoon in the operating theatre. During that
time, I could perform 10 cystoscopies or resect four prostates or do three
vasovasostomies. Most people would feel that to pursue gender reassignment
surgery in the current climate must be bottom of the list of medical importance.
The hospital continues with this, although it is totally against the wishes of
the division of surgery." Charing Cross GIC doctors Charles Mate-Kole, Donald
Montgomery, James Dalrymple & Steven Hirsch wrote to the BMJ in reply: “He
is unaware of studies done in our department, the results of which were
presented at a conference in December 1986 at this hospital”. RP Snaith from St
James University Hospital, Leeds, pointed out that while surgeons at Charing
Cross oppose gender operations, “and this is understandable since this one
hospital has undertaken the major proportion of this work for the whole of
Britain. This unfair burden should be corrected, as I pointed out, by the
establishment of regional services.” Williams resigned from Charing Cross the
next year.

1994 Richard
Green, ex-colleague of Harry Benjamin, became Director of Clinical Research,
and saw trans persons two days a week.

Donald Montgomery gave a presentation at the Gendys ’94 Conference in
Manchester discussing the GIC from the doctors’ point of view. At that time the
clinic was getting over 300 referrals a year, 80% mtf, of whom 20% had “some
form of gender reassignment surgery within five years”. He presented a typology:
“primary core transsexualism, secondary transsexualism, the heterosexual
transvestite, the asexual cross-dresser, the female transsexual, the small - the
very small - number of patients with a biological component”. He discussed other
GICs: “We are by far the biggest in the UK if not Europe, if not the world, I
think, in terms of patient referrals. There is a small clinic just for the
Leeds/Yorkshire catchment area. Professors Goldberg and Linton used to have a
clinic here in Manchester but I think all the Manchester patients are probably
being referred to us at the moment. There are occasional psychiatrists scattered
around the UK that have an interest in gender identity disorders, without
professional back up on the whole. Dr. Christie Brown still has his clinic at
Maudsley Hospital but I think it's probably running down rather than increasing.
Dr. Dunleavy in Newcastle and his colleagues have a small clinic there. There is
also the child and adolescent clinic at St. George's”

Jackie
McAuliffe had surgery in 1995. Later she would work as a prostitute in Paddington
Green and be featured in a docu-drama based in the area.

2000 The GIC approached James Bellringer to replace Mike Royal as the GIC’s
surgeon. Royal provided on-the-job training,

Kelly Denise Richards, serving time at HMP Parkhurst for assault and robbery,
was a patient. While still incarcerated, she had surgery and was transferred to
a women’s prison.

In December that year it was announced that the number of NHS sex-change
operations was set to triple, and that Charing Cross GIC would increase such
operations from one to three a week at an extra £1 million per annum. Liam Fox,
the Conservative shadow health secretary denounced the Labour Government of
pandering to lobby groups.

2004 Charles
Kane, businessman, in detransition, was, unlike his transition, a client of
the GIC.

2004 In 2004 as the Gender
Recognition Bill was proceeding through parliament, psychiatrist Russell
Reid faced a complaint to the General Medical
Council that he too easily accepted patients for hormone therapy and
surgery. The complaint was brought by four of his colleagues at the Charing
Cross Hospital Gender Identity Clinic, psychiatrists James Barrett, Richard
Green, Donald Montgomery and senior registrar Stuart Lorimer on behalf of
four of his former patients. Reid retired his NHS post the next year. In 2007
Reid was found guilty of Serious Professional Misconduct, mostly for failing to
communicate fully with patients’ family doctor (a rule that many doctors are
unaware of) and not documenting his reasons for departing from the HBIGDA
Standards of Care guidelines sufficiently.

The same year David Batty of The Guardian interviewed the GIC surgeon
James Bellringer and was told “The number who express immense gratitude is
overwhelming”. However Persia West who researched a report on the needs of trans
persons in Brighton and Hove (many of whom had been referred to the Charing
Cross GIC) and found “The level of dissatisfaction with the Charing Cross GIC
was very high, in essence concerning the time the treatment took and the manner
in which it was given.”

2006 The GIC saw 498 referrals.

2011 A proposed conference, Transgender: Time to Change sponsored by
the Royal College of Psychiatrists and led by Az
Hakeem of the Portman Clinic,
and featuring Julie
Bindel, but with no input from any trans persons, was cancelled after the
Charing Cross team criticized the emphasis of the meeting: “It now appears that
the conference comes at trans issues from a very specific agenda, namely, to
explore the validity or otherwise of gender diagnoses as medical and psychiatric
phenomena. So long as this is the case, we feel we can’t support it.”

US physician Ted
Eyton visited the GIC in 2013, and reported that it gets 1500 referrals per
year from GPs. This rate has been doubling every five years. Charing Cross GIC
gets about 50% of referrals in the UK. This was the same year as the
Conservative-Liberal coalition proposed to demolish the main Charing Cross
building, and to sell off 60% of the site to private developers.

2014 James Bellringer, who had been doing the majority of vaginoplasty work
for Charing Cross Hospital resigned.

2016 The GIC saw 1892 referrals in 12 months.

The West London Mental Health Trust (WLMHT) announced:

“However, as WLMHT moves forward it is necessary to refocus the services that
we provide. The Board has made a decision that the medium-term strategic focus
for the Trust will be to develop mental health services, physical care and
integration between the two.

“As a result, the Trust has come to the conclusion that patients requiring
gender identity services would be better served in the long term by another
provider, and has therefore served notice on our contract to NHS England.”

J. Bryan Tully. Accounting for Transsexualism. PhD Thesis, University
of Brunel, 1987. Published as Accounting for Transsexualism and
Transhomosexuality: The Gender Identity Careers of Over 200 Men and Women Who
Have Petitioned for Surgical Reassignment of Their Sexual Identity. London:
Whiting & Birch, 1992.

Persia West. Report into the Medical and Related Needs of Transgender
People in Brighton and Hove. Spectrum, 2004. PDF

James Barrett. Transsexual and Other Disorders of Gender Identity: A
practical guide to management. Radcliffe, 2007.

Deborah Blaustein. The Gatekeepers of Gender: A History of Transsexuality
in the National Health Service (including a Case Study of the Gender Identity
Clinic at Charing Cross Hospital). University of London, 2012.

Deborah Blaustein’s University of London thesis sounds quite interesting.
Unfortunately I was not able to find a copy.

Re the two Mate-Kole-Freschi-Robin studies: obviously transsexuals who have
been granted what they need are less neurotic than those who are frustrated by
being kept waiting year after year for no good reason.

For several of the doctors, eg. Richard Green, I was not able to find out
when they came and left.
The Wikipedia page on the West
London Mental Health NHS Trust does not even mention the Gender Identity
Clinic, nor does the Wikipedia page on the Hospital mention recent attempts to
close it and sell off the land.

Obviously the attitude of the staff is much better than it was in the 1960s
under John Randell who insisted on using birth pronouns and telling trans women
that they would always be men. However Persia West’s report shows that there is
further to go. The proposal that Charing Cross GIC be discontinued and replaced
by local GICs is possibly a good thing, if it is done right. However the track
record of the Conservative government since 2010 does not bode well.

14 September 2016

The hospital was originally founded in 1818 with royal patronage as the Royal
West London Infirmary, located behind Haymarket Theatre.
Patient numbers forced a move to a site near the Charing Cross. Doctors were
being trained from 1822, and from 1829 this was recognised by the

newly founded
University of London. The hospital was renamed to Charing Cross Hospital in
1827. After a major rebuild in 1877, the hospital had doubled in size, and it
was further extended in 1902. In 1926 the Royal Westminster Ophthalmic Hospital
was merged in.

Pioneering surgery on
intersex persons, mainly those with adreno-genital syndrome (now known as Congenital
adrenal hyperplasia) was being done by Lennox
Broster as early as the 1930s. In 1936 the champion shot-putter and javelin
thrower, Mark
Weston underwent two operations. Broster said: “Mr. Mark Weston, who was
always brought up as a female, is male, and should continue life as such". A
similar operation was performed on Mark’s younger
brother, Harry, a few years later. In 1938, Broster was co-author of a book
on the adrenal cortex and intersexuality.

Because of the wartime bombing, the hospital was in effect moved to Boxmoor, Hertfordshire in 1940.

Broster's work on the Weston brothers was reported in The News of the
World, in 1943 after Harry committed suicide. This report attracted patients
who would now be regarded as transsexual. However there is no evidence that such
persons were accepted, and Clifford Allen, the psychiatrist who worked with him,
specifically rejected surgical treatment for ‘transvestites’ (the term then in
use).

Charing Cross Hospital moved back to central London in 1947, but it was
decided to relocate, although it would take many years before the new building
was ready.

In 1950 John Randell was appointed Physician for Psychological Medicine at
Charing Cross Hospital, where he worked with Broster. By then ‘transvestites’
were being accepted. Randell wrote up 50 cases of “transvestism and
trans-sexualism” for The British Medical Journal in 1959, and his MD
thesis for the University of Wales, 1960, discussed 61 mtf and 16 ftm cases.
This was one of the first higher degree theses in English on transsexuality.

In 1957 it was proposed to join Charing Cross with the Fulham and West London
Hospitals.

Through the 1960s Randell was seeing 50 ‘transvestite’ cases a year, which
rose to nearly 200 in the 1970s. By his own figures, he saw 2438 patients (1768
mtf, 670 ftm). He also spent half his time with general psychiatric patients.
However he was not in favour of surgery until his patients who had had surgery
abroad returned with positive evaluations. Even in the 1960s less than 10% of
his patients managed to achieve surgery and only a third of the mtfs of those
had vaginoplasty. However most gender surgery performed in the UK was done at
Charing Cross.

1965 Lennox Broster died, aged 77.

The future Alice
Purnell,
a co-founder of the Beaument Society, had been attending the Charing Cross
Hospital Gender Clinic under the care of Dr Randell, and in 1966 was offered
surgery. However Purnell married a second wife instead.

The First International Symposium on Gender Identity was held at the
Piccadilly Hotel, London, 25-7 July 1969. It was sponsored and organized by the
Erikson
Foundation and the Albany Trust. Arguments
arose between the team from Chelsea Women's who regarded transsexuals as a form
of intersex, and the team from Charing Cross Hospital who regarded them as
having a psychological disorder. The Symposium did bring together the doctors
working in the field. Randell’s name was mentioned several times in the press.
The program
for the symposium reported the situation in Britain as follows: “The treatment
of transsexuals has also been undertaken by specialising teams of psychiatrists,
physicians and surgeons but there is as yet no permanent gender identity unit”.

After reading about the symposium in The Times, Mark
Rees, one of the future founders of Press for Change, contacted the Albany
Trust, which passed him onto Dr Randell, at first at his Harley Street Rooms for
a fee, and then at the GIC on the NHS.

One of Randell’s patients was the London school teacher, Della
Aleksander, who had surgery with Dr Burou
in Casablanca, 1970, and who would organise pioneering gender conferences in 1974
and 1975, and co-produce a BBC2 program on transsexuals in 1974.

1970 was notably the year of Corbett
v. Corbett, the divorce trial litigated by Arthur Corbett, the heir apparent
to the Rowallan Baroncy, against his estranged wife of seven years, the model,
April Ashley. Dr Randell appeared for the litigant and testified that that he
“considered that the respondent (ie April) is properly classified as a male
homosexual transsexualist”. This opinion contributed to the verdict which
redefined legal intersex as chromosomal, gonadal and genital sex at
birth not being concordant, and that psychological aspects not otherwise to be
considered. It was ruled that Lady Corbett was not a woman for the purpose of
marriage, and the re-issue of revised birth certificates for transsexuals
stopped immediately.

Randell published a paper, "Indications for Sex Reassignment Surgery"
in.Archives of Sexual Behavior,1971.

The new Charing Cross Hospital, now located in the site of the former Fulham
Hospital was formally opened in 1973. Initially it was called Charing Cross
Hospital, Fulham, but eventually the ‘Fulham’ was dropped.

In the 1970s when numbers increased, still only 15% of patients achieved
surgery. By then Randell was arguing that surgery could be appropriate and that
psychotherapy did not work. Even then he restricted surgery to sane,
intelligent, single and passable individuals. Passable implied conforming to
Randell’s old-fashioned ideas of being ‘ladylike’, that many women had abandoned
by the 1970s. Until the end he continued to refer to patients, including
post-operatives, by the pronouns of their birth gender, and would tell a trans
women, accepted for surgery, that ‘you’ll always be a man’.

By 1971 journalist/historian Jan
Morris had been accepted in the program at Charing Cross, but withdrew as
they insisted that Jan and her wife be divorced.

The future singer and actress, Adèle
Anderson
became a patient in 1973, the year that Randell’s one and only book, Sexual
Variations, came out.

The model and Bond-girl, Caroline
Cossey/Tula, was a patient of Randell, and was approved for surgery
in 1974. Unlike other patients, Tula found him to be ‘absolutely charming’
(perhaps because she passed so well).

Rachael
Padman arrived in England in 1977 as a Cambridge physics PhD student, and
was quickly accepted at the Charing Cross GIC, and put on oestrogens.

Randell wrote an article, “Transsexualism and its management”, for the
Nursing Mirror, also that year.

Rachael
Webb, then a lorry driver, but who would become notorious in the press in
1983 when she used a £2,000 loan, available to all council employees, to pay for
her operation (others used it as a deposit for a mortgage), became a patient at
the GIC in 1978.

A 1979 episode of the BBC Inside Story documentary series was
“George”, directed by David Pearson, about a pre-op transsexual. There was
sufficient interest that this was expanded into a ground-breaking documentary,
A Change of
Sex, 1980, which followed the social and medical transition of
Julia Grant (George) and also provided a snapshot of the Charing Cross Hospital
Gender Identity Clinic. Randell is the unnamed doctor who shocked most reviewers
by his attitude.

In 1980 the News of the World (12/10/80) claimed that Randell and his
surgeon, Peter Phillip, had made London the ‘sex-change capital of the world’.

1982 John Randell died of a heart attack aged 64. Ashley Robin, who had retired
after a heart attack, stepped in and became head of the GIC. Russell
Reid became a consultant, and Alfred Hohburger joined, at first on a
honorary basis.

Rachael
Padman had GIC approved surgery in October, and her Cambridge PhD thesis was
approved while she was in hospital.

Charing Cross
(51°30′26″N 00°07′39″W) denotes the junction of the Strand, Whitehall and
Cockspur Street, just south of Trafalgar Square. It was the location of the most
expensive of the Eleanor
Crosses erected 1291-4. The cross was destroyed by order of Parliament in
1647, and after the Restoration, an equestrian statue of the first Charles
Stuart was raised on the spot, and is still standing. A replacement cross was
commissioned in 1865 by the South Eastern Railway Company and is still found in
the forecourt of Charing Cross Railway Station. The site of the original cross
is the official centre of London, and distances to/from London are to/from
Charing Cross. The fact that Charing Cross Hospital later moved to Fulham
complicates the issue.

The Wikipedia article on Boxmoor does not mention that
it was the wartime location of Charing Cross Hospital.

The WLMHT GIC web site says:
“The West London Gender Identity Clinic at Charing Cross Hospital (CX GIC) is
the largest and oldest clinic of its type, dating back to 1966.” But what
happened in 1966? Lennox Broster’s work with intersex persons dates back to the
1930s, and John Randell’s with transvestites and transsexuals dates to the
1950s. On the other hand the 1969 symposium reported “there is as yet no
permanent gender identity unit”.

03 September 2016

Nochmen Tenenbaum served with distinction in the Polish Army in the early 1930s. He
earned medals after saving several persons from drowning, and was promoted to
sergeant.

A year later in 1936, after physical and psychological changes, and leaving
the army, Tenenbaum, still in male clothing, arrived at a maternity home in
Warsaw and requested a room, stating that he was about to give birth. A 4 kg
child was born. The father was an artist.

------
The anti-sodomy laws in Poland had not been enforced since independence in
1918. They were officially repealed in 1932.

The Daily Mirror story contains the comment: “Although there are many
authentic cases of sex changes on record, this is believed to be the first time
in the history of medical science that the metamorphosis was so complete
that reproduction was possible”. This in 1936!

Most likely, Tenenbaum was female-born, had transitioned (without hormones, which was the only option at the time) in order to serve
in the army, but had been sexually compromised and become pregnant. We know
nothing of him after 1936.

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About Zagria

I have a social science degree. I spent several years in the 70s doing Gay Lib counselling, and moved on to organizing trans groups. I was rejected by the Clarke Institute (now CAMH) in the mid 1980s, probably because I do not match either of their stereotypes, but was accepted by Russel Reid on our first meeting in late 1987, and had surgery from James Dalrymple some months later. I have mainly worked as an IT consultant. I have been with the same husband for 45 years.